Million of Britons are ignoring the perils of identity theft
According to a report recently published by Callcredit, one of the UK’s leading credit reference agencies, millions of Britons are electing to ignore all of the advice they have recently been receiving about ways they can help prevent the theft of their identity by continuing to throw away personal information in places accessible to fraudsters.
 With the introduction of CHIP and PIN cards two years ago, it was hoped that credit card fraud in the UK would fall off dramatically. While there has been some reduction in UK credit card fraud, the hoped for level of reduction has not materialised. In part, the reason why this is the case is because more and more credit card transactions can now be processed over the Internet, where the domain of CHIP and PIN is not so influential in helping to reduce credit card fraud. In attempts to try and reduce the level of Internet credit card fraud, the UK’s credit card providers have run several major publicity campaigns warning their cardholders of the dangers of allowing fraudsters to steal their person information and thereby re-create their identity online.
Despite this, research from the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has revealed that as many as one in three Brits is happy to throw their credit card and bank statements away in the bin. In most cases, they do not even take the precaution of shredding the letters before disposing of them. Indeed, as many as 25% of all credit cardholders in the UK are happy to throw away their credit card statement without even having read what is on the statement.
Commenting on the continuing complacency among Brits when it comes to identity theft, Melanie Mitchley, director of industry relations at Callcredit said, “Personal data is the lifeblood of identity thieves and they are gorging themselves on people’s complacency.” Adding that preventative measures in destroying personal documents can “go a long way to starving ID fraudsters of opportunities.”
In the meantime, millions of Britons still remain unaware of what credit ratings are and how they can affect their chances of obtaining cheap credit. The ICO report estimates that as many as 80% of all adults in the UK have never made a request to see a copy of their credit reference file to check whether or not there has been any unauthorised activity been conducted in their name.
Tom Smith
6th February 2007
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